Every man is a piece of the continent, but what if the continent is breaking up?

No man is an island entire of itself, every man/is a piece of the continent,” wrote John Donne, English poet and cleric of the 16th century. Five hundred years later, his country has just appointed a minister for loneliness, in acknowledgment of the wave of social isolation sweeping its people. The figures are staggering: According to the UK government, nine million citizens often or always feel lonely; over 200,000 elderly people have not had a conversation with a friend or a relative in a month. Britain is not alone. Last year, a former United States surgeon general, urged governments and workplaces to recognise and tackle an “epidemic of loneliness”.

Human life has always swung between isolation and belonging; solitude and solidarity. But in the 21st century, and especially in the First World, many humans are lonelier than they have ever been. Primed to live in families and clans, many citizens are now atomised individuals, tethered to gadgets, unglued from a common destiny. In India, too, the elderly are left to fend for themselves in cities, abandoned by the young. This reconfiguring has happened thanks to a reordering of the structures of work, technology and a breakdown of communal life. Its costs are exceedingly high. Mounting medical evidence suggests that lonely people are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression and anxiety.

According to a public health official in the UK, “loneliness is worse than smoking 15 cigarettes a day”. While the old are more prone to isolation, the young, who are faced with social realities unprecedented in the human story — the automatisation of work, the crumbling of the family system and the tempting, tantalising free fall of a “virtual life” — are not immune either.

Loneliness might go against the grain of human life, but there is no easy way to switch us back to gregariousness. The UK government proposes to tackle this problem through public health institutions, communities and the voluntary sector. But it will need a new imagination of human living to get the broken pieces of “the continent” together again.